The use of highly developed electronics has provided the world with many applications that are integral to operation of financial, medical, electric-utility, and many other industries. The use of electronics is also integral to the operation of supporting infrastructure items such as the power grid, air conditioning, and emergency electricity-generation equipment.
Exposure to electromagnetic fields can cause interference or damage to such electronic equipment, causing that equipment to malfunction or rendering it nonoperational. These electronics are susceptible to being disrupted or damaged by electromagnetic interference, such as an electromagnetic pulse (generally characterized by frequencies between 14 kHz and 1 GHz) or intentional electromagnetic interference (generally characterized by frequencies between 10 MHz and 10 GHz) (EMP/IEMI) event. These electromagnetic events are capable of producing electromagnetic environments of much higher intensity than current electronic equipment is designed to operate in. Environments requiring the shielding of sensitive electronic equipment have not been considered in current standards for protection against electromagnetic interference and protection in these environments requires shielding sensitive electronic equipment in ways that have not been adopted in the industry related to electromagnetic compatibility is required.
Some methods for protecting electronic equipment from electromagnetic pulses are known in the art. For instance, high altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) hardening has been used by the military for decades, and equipment and standards exists for protecting equipment from this and other electromagnetic threats. Standards are written toward protecting facilities, and physically substantial shielding is used in such construction. Electromagnetic shielding has been previously used to address discrete circumstances. Such examples are magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) rooms, shielding rooms used to test equipment and electromagnetic standards, shielding used in research facilities to protect sensitive equipment from interference. These standards, however, are used to adjust a narrow range of threats and thus systems developed to address a certain problem are not useful to address other problems necessitating electromagnetic shielding. A commoditized, standard electromagnetically shielded enclosure that can be used in several applications is desirable.
It is known in the art that a shield against EMP/IEMI events can be constructed making a solid electromagnetically conductive enclosure (sometimes called a “Faraday cage”). These enclosures lack practical applicability, however, as any attempt to access the interior of the enclosure disrupts the shielding effect and exposes any sensitive equipment housed in the enclosure to a timely EMP/IEMI event. Existing and planned data centers using such enclosures tend to be individually engineered in that the physical layout of the spaces is different from data center to data center. This type of approach leads to high design and construction costs. Moreover, existing methods for protecting sensitive electronics from electromagnetic interference are designed with a narrow range of applicability in mind and do not cover the entire range of potential EMP/IEMI threats. The enclosures of the present disclosure proposed are an engineered system that can be built at remote locations, hauled, and installed at the data center location with relative ease, efficiency, and cost effectiveness. Moreover, the enclosures of the present disclosure provide protection from a wide range of EMP/IEMI threats. Additionally, large-scale data centers typically used to perform operations in a number of industries are not currently designed with these concerns in mind, and are constructed in such a way to make modifications, whether for protection, expansion, or other reasons, extremely difficult.
For these and other reasons, improved solutions to EMP/IEMI threats which are cost and time-effective, and scalable, are desirable from a business standpoint.